braver (queliot song fic)
by RavenclawStarkid13
Summary: Takes place during the season four finale - tries to answer the question: what was Eliot doing between Margo crying over him and the bonfire? Kind of a character study of Eliot during this time frame.
1. one

**(feel free to skip this long author's note, it's been awhile)**

**Woah. So this is weird. Hey y'all. I've somehow been able to remember both the email and password to this account, and I come with a gift. Found this Magicians fic in my drafts - I have absolutely no recollection of writing it, but it was written in Comic Sans and the last edit made date was 3 am last August so...I don't know. I found it, thought it was kinda good, made some edits, and here we are. Hope anyone reading this is having a fantastic day :D**

**(ps this fic is gonna be split into 4 parts but I am uploading them all together so don't worry)**

tw: hospitals, blood, death, suicide (not explicit, just implied by the events of the show)

spoilers for: The Magicians season 4 finale

ALSO: Obviously I don't own The Magicians as a whole, or Quentin, Eliot, Margo, or Todd. (though if the Magicians creators wanna hit me up for some story advice, yo)

**Hold On**

"You want to live your life, live it here."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know exactly what it means."

Eliot was tired. So tired. He had been drifting in and out of consciousness for what seemed like weeks, though he knew in the back of his mind that not too much time had passed. An hour or two, perhaps. He was sure he had been drugged earlier, maybe knocked unconscious. He had seen needles once or twice.

Despite his muddled brain, Eliot still found the headspace to find it ironic that while he did have control of his own body again, he still remained stuck inside his own mind, his body too weak to cooperate.

He conjured images of Bambi, his Bambi, who he had seen...sometime earlier. She had been screaming and screaming and he had used her anger to give him the strength to speak, to use a mouth that now seemed so foreign to him. In his happy place, moving wasn't this hard. Speaking wasn't this hard. But Eliot no longer had access to his happy place. To Charlton. Now all he had was the abyss of his mind...and a body that just wanted to shut itself down, reboot.

His happy place, while basically a prison, was...well, happy. Despite his focus on collecting intel and getting out, Eliot had...partaken in happy memories. Conjured them up, lived through them again, sometimes again and again. Most involved Bambi or Quen- Q.

Eliot hadn't seen Q. He had seen Bambi, and maybe heard Q. He couldn't remember.

Where was Quentin?

Eliot's eyes flickered open. Ignoring his pounding head and how his abdomen felt like it was on fire, he somehow managed to force his arms to push him upwards several inches. Somewhat in a sitting position, he had a better view of the ro-

Bambi.

She was a few feet from the end of his hospital bed, sitting in a small, plastic chair. She had silent tears rolling down her cheeks and was staring at her hands. Hands covered in Eliot's blood. Eliot felt a pang in his chest, but something else about this visual was bothering him. Margo was not a crier. She abhorred partaking in such activities.

He needed to get his mouth working again. "Margo?" He cringed at the rasp in his voice. He wasn't even sure he had spoken loud enough for her to hear him, but alas - her head rose, her eyes moving from her blood stained fingers to him, looking everywhere but his eyes.

Something was wrong.

Margo dropped her gaze back to her hands. Eliot waited. He could tell she wanted to say something. Maybe she was having trouble getting the words out too today. He could relate. After a moment or two, she reached up and wiped away her tear streaked face, which ended up leaving streaks of blood - his blood - on her cheeks.

Her gaze hardened. She stood up and made her way over to Eliot's bedside, dragging the cheap plastic chair alongside her. It made a horrible screeching noise that seemed to bother neither of them. She sat down.

"Bambi?"

"Quentin is dead."

The pain was gone in an instant, replaced with a numbing kind of dread. His heart began to pound, faster and faster, until he could not even hear himself think.


	2. two

Eliot had never been one to have hope, but he hoped Q was out there somewhere.

He hoped he knew.

_know that when i'm braver it's because of you_

_know that when i'm braver it's because of you_

_know that when i'm braver it's because of you_

_know that when i'm braver it's because of you_

This was not the circumstances in which Eliot expected those words to play out, but they did not ring any less true.

He could be brave. He would be. He was. Quentin Coldwater had helped him to be brave.


	3. three

Eliot took a deep breath and extended his pointer finger towards his closet, and then twisting his other fingers into a tut.

He had sent Todd out for the peach. Eliot had shown him the portal he had created with Margo their first year to LA. He told Todd to find a peach from an orchard, a real tree.

Eliot wasn't sure why he trusted Todd with this endeavor, but he knew he himself was not up for the task and Margo had promptly disappeared after the group had decided to hold a memorial service and had not been seen for several hours.

"So - why the peach? Is it like a sex thing?" Todd asked with an awkward laugh as he handed over the fruit.

Eliot clenched his jaw, but managed to not throw the younger student across the room with a flick of his wrist. He had returned to a forever darker world, but at least Todd was the same. "It's more of an 'in love' thing. Get out of my room, Todd." Eliot paused as Todd started to back out of the room. "And thank you."

"N- no problem, boss!" Todd offered a clumsy salute, and then stumbled out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him.


	4. four

Eliot was cradling the peach, running his thumb over it, over and over and over, when Margo returned. She had Quentin's crown tucked under her arm. She had been to Fillory. In her other arm, she carried Eliot's black cane.

She offered it to him. "Thought it might help."

He took the cane, hands shaking a bit as he did. "Thank you, Margo."

Margo smiled. "And it matches your outfit."

Eliot nodded. "So it does." He made to stand up and wobbled a bit, even with the cane, but then Margo was at his side, helping him up. The pair trudged out of the room and down the old, rickety steps of the Cottage, through the grass, and towards the smoke that was beginning to drift into the night sky in the distance.


End file.
